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Lucha Libre on Grimm!

Lucha Libre on Grimm! | Image taken from http://www.nbc.com/grimm | Shared by Elizabeth Dentlinger at SraDentlinger.wordpress.com

Every once in awhile NBC’s Grimm features a tale with a Spanish connection instead of the traditional grimm tales. I distinctly remembered four year ago when they featured La llorona. I was so geeked because it was perfectly timed with Halloween and I let my Spanish 3 classes watch the episode. El cucuy made an appearance in 2013 and I’m pretty sure we’ve seen la chupacabra, too. I was pleasantly surprised to find that this week’s episode, called Silence of the Slams, was lucha libre inspired!

Obviously, there were a lot of lucha libre elements in this episode. The episode begins with the mask maker surrounded with his many masks. The mask maker is working on a “Magnus” mask and he briefly mentions mesoamerica and giant heads built of stone. We hear luchador names like El liberador and El tigre feroz. The episode doesn’t show much of the actual fight, but does show the two luchadores behind the scenes and the struggle of the fact that one must lose. While not as accurate compared to what we learned about in our lucha libre unit, we see the main luchador‘s identity change as he changes masks. This might be because the entire premise is that in order to win more matches, the primary luchador has the mask maker create a special mask…. which requires the mask maker to skin off someone else’s face silence-of-the-lamb-style for the mask.

I do not intend to show this episode to my students with my lucha libre unit because it doesn’t get at the true heart of lucha libre and I think the connection to Silence of the Lambs would give students the wrong connections, but I wanted to share for those interested in lucha libre!